I was born in Poland in 1951. My professional career – all based in the United States, but now increasingly global in scope – has been dedicated to brand positioning.
I co-founded Graj + Gustavsen in 1989. Our exclusive client list includes Brooks Brothers, HGTV, Levi’s, Harley-Davidson, Saks, and Food Network. I'd like to think that G+G is a favored resource of investment managers seeking decisive brand turnarounds and extensions.
I know the world of branding both as a line executive – buyer, designer and CEO – and as a hands-on consultant. I’m always in pursuit of harnessing entrepreneurship to maximize brand development opportunities.

Coco Chanel: Personal Branding Legend

Coco Chanel‘s stunning triumphs as an innovator are a topic I’ve written about before:

Did Coco Chanel dream these things up? She was far smarter! She listened to the world around her and articulated the vision everyone yearned to have. She enabled and facilitated a fashion cyclone that was gestating in the collective soul of her time. We’re all witnessing the same events; but, as is usually the case, it takes genius to detect the significance of what’s happening.

Her classic, corset-free, soft and alluring looks revitalized classical styling values and forever changed the face of fashion. What enabled her to do what she did so well? Coco Chanel had enough confidence in herself to rely on her own judgment. She was famous for saying: ““The most courageous act is still to think for yourself. Aloud.” That goes to the very source of game-changing creativity. Chanel was not the sort to rely on intermediaries to form her aesthetic judgments.

In our age, we have learned how indispensable teams are in implementing anything. Every leader and entrepreneur must spend a good deal of their working life in the team space. There’s just no other way to get things done.

It’s far less certain that the team dynamic is the right nutrient for creative insight. The more the comfort and security of consensus is sought, the more likely brilliant insight will be eroded.

Coco Chanel was a formidable and opportunistic operator. Her capacity to compartmentalize was amazing, and revelations about her during the Nazi era have surely caused dismay. However, looked at strictly as a fashion and branding genius, her stature is not likely to be dimmed. For me, four traits define what made her nearly a prototype for personal branding of all sorts that have followed since:

Chanel maintained constant, unfiltered contact with the tastes of the public for which she designed.

She relentlessly focused on the basic drivers of her lines and looks.

Chanel was a confident spokesperson for a new language and lexicon about her core competence of fashion.

While Chanel let what she learned inform her judgments and responses, she maintained a powerful mystique about her recipes for style. Chanel articulated the essence with transparency, but she retained strict custody of the “secret sauce” that made her unique.

Every brand, at its heart, has the vestige of a personal imprint – some brands, surely, more strongly than others. For the entrepreneurial business person, it takes discernment and continuous discipline to distinguish between the private genius of brand definition . . . and the collaborative, many-handed realization of brand implementation.

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